Can You Make New ‘Best Friends’ as an Adult?

Author Billy Baker’s We Need to Hang Out

“People are comfortable saying they’re depressed. But they’re not comfortable saying they’re lonely, because you’re the kid sitting alone in the cafeteria.” Baker, Billy. We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends, Simon & Schuster, 2021 

Have you ever told someone you were lonely? Or are you embarrassed, as if you have failed somehow? In some ways, I think we’re all terrified of being the kid sitting alone in the school cafeteria. But maybe that kid is perfectly fine on his own–or he needs to work harder at making friends. Maybe kids are just mean, but when we grow up, we still want to sit at the cool kids’ table.

You reach a certain age and discover that all you do is work and do chores at home, Baker writes. You hardly ever see your friends from the past and rarely make new ones. When Baker’s editor at the Boston Globe asked him to write about how men these days have trouble making and keeping friendships, he looked at his own life and started on a quest. This book tells the story of his efforts to make “hanging out with the guys” a regular part of his life. 

Baker includes a good bit of information on loneliness and the science behind friendship, but for the most part, this is a fun account of his attempts to bond with his guy friends in a way that didn’t feel like a chore. Did he succeed? Well, kind of. 

Baker already had a wife and kids and a bunch of friends. He was far from alone, but his quest taught him a few things, including how male friendships differ from female ones. 

• Men need an activity to bond. “It’s a measurable fact that men make their deepest friendships through periods of intense engagement, such as sports or military service or school. It’s hardwired into our genetics; we spent millions of years hunting together. Going through something together was not only how we built our bonds but how we maintained them.”

• Men and women interact differently. Snapshots of people interacting show women talk face to face. Men talk shoulder to shoulder.

• “Friends were what we did after the ‘important’ stuff was done, and that shit is never done.”

• “The reality is that there are no successful loners in the history of social evolution. Being a solo survivalist is arduous and inefficient. Survival has only been accomplished in groups.”

• “From the very beginning, the researchers have been asking the subjects a simple question that has incredibly telling results: Who would you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or afraid? . . . Those who had someone to turn to in that moment were statistically healthier and happier. They also aged better and lived longer than people who lacked warm, close relationships.”

• “I’m gonna tell you something else that’s rare: spending two hundred hours interacting with a new friend. That’s the point at which, according to a 2018 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, people are able to cross the line into good/best friends. That rarely happens outside of work, maybe at the gym.”

• “The concept of having a friend’s back, and knowing they have yours, is a sacred pact. It’s the knowledge that in times of danger and crisis you are not alone. What makes it so special is that it doesn’t apply to every friend in the exact same way. There are only so many people you’d jump into a fight for.”

• “Friendship is not a science; it’s a magic, and when it works the mechanism of the trick is unseen by the audience. Two humans come together and a special alchemy turns it into something grand.”

I marked many more passages in the book, but this is more than enough to talk about. Where do grownups make friends, real friends who will show up no matter what? What makes some people more than just acquaintances? Have you tried to make adult friends? Did it work? Do you think men and women bond differently? 

I met my current best friend, who has become the sister I never had, at church on a day when both of us had just lost loved ones. We bonded over our losses, music, and a love of going out to lunch. We have been close ever since, and we have helped each other through some tough times. She moved away, but we talk and text often, and she’s still the one I call first when anything happens. Magic? Grace? Luck? I don’t know, but I’m grateful. 

You can listen to Baker talk about his book and his efforts to make friends on this YouTube interview with Andrew Metz, managing editor of PBS’s documentary series Frontline. Andrew happens to be one of Baker’s best friends, and he is featured in the book.

You might also want to look into the work of Dr. Marisa Franco. Her book, Platonic, is also about making adult friends. On her blog, she recently posted about female friendships.

What do you think? Can we make new friends as grownups?  

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How did I end up alone? I didn’t have any kids. After my husband and I retired to the Oregon coast, far from family, he died of Alzheimer’s. You can read our story in my forthcoming memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, coming out in June. Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.